Ron's Reflections

The Republican National Convention this year devoted a significant portion of its prime time schedule to women and minority speakers, many of whom are the equivalent of rock stars in conservative circles. I expected liberals, from the bottom of the barrel to the top, to respond to the presence of these speakers, but even they caught me by surprise with the shrillness, ugliness and unhinged anger they showed.
Mia Love, the Republican nominee for the 4th Congressional District seat in Utah, brought down the house in Tampa with her personal story. The daughter of Haitian immigrants and a first-generation American, she spoke compellingly of how her parents came here with practically nothing but a hope that America was truly the land of opportunity:

Let me tell you about the America I know. My parents immigrated to the U.S. with ten dollars in their pocket, believing that the America they had heard about really did exist. When times got tough they didn't look to Washington, they looked within. So the America I came to know was centered in personal responsibility and filled with the American dream. The America I know is grounded in the determination found in patriots and pioneers, in small business owners with big ideas, in the farmers who work in the beauty of our landscape, in our heroic military and Olympians. It's in every child who looks at the seemingly impossible and says, "I can do that." That is the America I know!

She is on the verge of possibly becoming the first black Republican woman ever in the U.S. Congress. I imagine back in the days I was growing up, my parents would have pointed to Ms. Love with pride and held her up to me and my siblings as a role model.

Today's liberals, however, attack her with some of the vilest language imaginable, calling her a "house nigger" and a "dirty, worthless whore" among other choice phrases.

Similar language was used against Artur Davis, an honors graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School, and a former U.S. congressman from Alabama. Dr. Condoleeza Rice, of course, is a veteran of the racially-charged language hurled at blacks who don't adhere to the standard script which white liberals and the black orthodoxy have written for them.

The attacks on the women who spoke at the convention were no less vile, and I can't repeat the language used against them here. Among their number were the two women I previously cited, one the first black mayor in Utah history and the other a former U.S. Secretary of State, the first Latina governor in U.S. history, the first Indian-American woman governor in U.S. history, the first woman to serve as lieutenant governor and governor of Oklahoma, and the first to be elected to the U.S. Congress from Oklahoma since the 1920s, a former lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, the first female attorney general in New Hampshire who is now a sitting U.S. senator from that state, the highest ranking Republican woman in the U.S. Congress, the attorney general for the state of Florida, and an entrepreneur running to become the lieutenant governor of Delaware. Clearly, these are serious and accomplished women, and role models for young girls everywhere – right?

Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz called them "shiny packaging."

Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was equally dismissive of the minority speakers, including fellow Hispanics like Governor Susana Martinez of New Mexico, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Governor Brian Sandoval of Nevada, and Governor Luis Fortuño of Puerto Rico, sneering, "You can't just tout out a brown face or a Spanish surname and expect the people are going to vote for your party or your candidate."

During the convention, several white liberal reporters seized the opportunity to anoint themselves as guardians of racial correctness. With Hurricane Isaac bearing down on the Gulf Coast, Yahoo News' Washington bureau chief David Chalian proclaimed that the Romneys "were happy to have a party with black people drowning." (He was fired, presumably for voicing what other reporters were thinking.) MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell accused Sen. Mitch McConnell of racism for joking about the frequency of President Obama's golf outings. Tiger Woods is half black, you see. O'Donnell's colleague, Chris Matthews, implied that GOP Chairman Reince Priebus was racist for allegedly "foreignizing" President Obama — by likening his policies to those pursued in Europe. You see, "Europe" equals "foreign" equals "the other" equals "black." In the fevered incoherence of Matthews' brain, the dots are all connected.

Of course, in Chris Matthews' fevered mind, mentioning Obama's Chicago background is racist, too. If their foolish accusations hadn't effectively neutered all charges of racism going forward in the minds of most Americans, one could laugh at their obsession. Unfortunately, they have done real harm to those who could face legitimate racism in the future, and for that, they deserve our scorn and condemnation. If they do it for ratings, they are reprehensible. If they do it because they want to influence the political calculus in their favor, they are unfit to be called journalists. If they do it because they believe it, they are deluded.

No decent person believes that the color of your skin should limit what you're allowed to achieve or what you're allowed to earn. So why do some liberals believe that the color of your skin should limit what you're allowed to think? When people of color refuse to think the way they're 'supposed to' think, when they follow their conscience to conservatism, do they forfeit their right to be treated with dignity and respect? The obvious moral answer is 'no,' but some liberals don't seem to get that. And it is particularly troubling when white liberals attempt to enforce racial groupthink in communities that are not their own.

They are blind, however, to their condescension and, yes, their latent racism. What else do you call the presumption that because I am black, I must think, speak and act a prescribed way in order to be authentic? Is there some great liberal god out there with a certificate of ownership that has the names of all black people on it, and which demands our loyalty without question or deviation? Is it not "soft bigotry" to presume that we as individual human beings, unique in form, mind and soul, not only believe the same things, but are somehow morally deficient if we do not? Did these angry, foaming liberals ever sit still and listen to a conservative woman or conservative of color recount their own story of how they came to the conclusions they did, and how they exercised the freedom of conscience which liberals claim to revere, but only when you reach the conclusions they want you to reach?

How many of you have pets at home? Pet owners know they can get their pets to do silly things for treats. They will perform for you if they think there's a chance you might toss them something to eat. Since modern American journalism has devolved into a performance, I can only presume that we will put a stop to nonsense like this once we stop feeding them with attention, as difficult as it is to let the demagoguery go unchallenged. They neither own me, nor do I answer to them, so I don't owe them my time or attention. Maybe it's time for the rest of America to leave them alone to stew in their own hateful juices.